


we'll pull ourselves ashore

by raumdeuter



Series: Football RPF Week 2018 [1]
Category: Football RPF, National Football League RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 07:06:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14910675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raumdeuter/pseuds/raumdeuter
Summary: Sometimes it takes the end of the world to figure out a few basic truths. You know how it is. Pacific Rim AU.





	we'll pull ourselves ashore

**Author's Note:**

> a warning: this fic is a fusion and as such plays fast and loose with the pacific rim timeline and canon in general, although not nearly as much as pacific rim: uprising did. heyooooooooooooo

Twelve hours after the second attack hits Manila, David calls Odell to tell him he’s enlisting.

“Enlisting in what?” says Odell.

David hesitates. “There’s a project,” he says. “I don’t know a lot about it yet. Rose told me about it. Some kind of defense force. They’re building some kind of weapon to fight the--”

He waves his free hand, nebulous. They don’t have a name for them yet, the monsters that crawled out of somebody else’s nightmare, that took out San Fran and most of Metro Manila. Behind David, Odell can see the TV’s still on, the volume turned low, the same slow-motion clip of the creature dragging its terrible bulk through Ortigas Center, shedding bent steel and sheet glass like scales.

“You think there’s gonna be more?” says Odell.

“Better to be ready and then proven wrong,” says David. He looks down for a moment, and when he looks back up there’s steel in his gaze. “I know what you’re going to tell me--”

“Okay,” says Odell.

“--but I’ve thought about it a lot, you know, just because my family weren’t hurt this time around doesn’t mean there won’t be a next time, and I’ve already talked to the coach, and he said…”

He trails to a stop, realizing. Odell waits. In the background, the TV plays on.

“Okay,” says David.

“Yeah,” says Odell. “Okay, bro. Simple as that. Count me in.”

“You--” begins David, and then he stops. For a moment he looks like he’s going to try to talk Odell out of it, and then he must realize how hypocritical that would sound. Instead he laughs a little and looks down again, and something in Odell’s chest twists at the sight.

“Okay,” repeats David, softer this time. “See you there.”

 

\---

 

David’s waiting for him at the edge of Kodiak Harbor, just outside Academy headquarters. As Odell gets close he grins and waves, like nothing’s strange about any of this, like it’s early morning practice and Odell’s the second one to arrive on the field.

“Took you long enough,” he says. His breath puffs out white in the grey dawn.

“I got farther to fly than you.” Odell glances up at the nearest hangar bay. Jaegers, he remembers. _Hunters._ He’d looked that one up himself, just so he could see David’s expression when he caught him out. “This the place?”

“Yeah. We gotta report in first. Then training.”

“Weird to think they’re gonna teach us how to fight.” Odell drops into an exaggerated boxing stance, takes a few mock swings at David, who ducks easily out of the way. “You and me, we’re gonna go a few rounds. Promise?”

David laughs. He brings his fists up, darts forward, two light punches to the chest, over Odell’s heart.

 

\---

 

Afterwards he won’t remember much of Jaeger Academy. It’s grueling for a reason; they have to make sure you’ll be ready for anything the Breach will throw at you. All he knows is it’s harder than any training camp he’s ever gone through. More than five hundred recruits to start with, and after the first cut there are fifty left. He’s one of them. So is David.

There are two more kaiju attacks while they’re at the Academy. Cabo. Sydney. They all see the smoking ruins of the Opera House, but Odell can’t let himself think about that. Can’t let himself think about anything but making it past the final cut.

Signing up had been the right thing to do. Everybody knows that. And when the news broke there’d been the obligatory media frenzy and he’d had to give a lot of samey interviews about how he was doing his duty, and how there were more important things in life now than football.

But the simpler reason is this: David went, and he followed. It’s as easy as that.

 

\---

 

Odell’s never been to Hong Kong before. He’s seen it in documentaries, all those skyscrapers stacked so close they’re almost on top of each other, but even so the scale of it hits him hard. Even in Manhattan you get neighborhoods here and there, room to breathe. Hong Kong is like a technicolor vise, and if you want to see the sky the only way you can look is straight up.

He and David get assigned neighboring rooms, which is a blessing in and of itself. They toss their duffel bags down on their bunks and grin at each other in the yellow neon of the hallway lights of the Shatterdome (and that, thinks Odell, is either the dumbest or the most badass name in the world. Maybe it’s a little bit of both).

“Sweet, huh?” says David. He’s holding up his phone, turning it this way and that. Odell catches a glimpse of Boateng and Ribéry on the other end. David’s had to stop posting on Instagram since he enlisted, but no amount of secrecy can get him to stop FaceTiming his teammates.

“Think it needs a little personal touch,” says Odell. “Big portrait of you on one of the walls, maybe.”

“Shut up,” says David, delighted. “What’s next?”

“Kwoon in five,” says Odell. He glances at his watch. “You ready, bro?”

Boateng says something in German, and David laughs. “He says go easy on me,” he says.

“I didn’t,” says Boateng, loudly. “I said if you kick his ass, I’m gonna come and kick yours.” But he’s grinning, so Odell figures he’s probably okay.

 

\---

 

 _Combat in the Kwoon is not a fight_ , one of their instructors had said once. _It’s a dance_. David had snickered and muttered something about maybe he should have gotten Eli Manning to enlist instead, and Odell had elbowed him in the side, and they’d both gotten latrine duty for three days for disruptive behavior in the Kwoon.

Now they face each other across a dingy grey mat and bow, and as they lunge towards each other, their movements suddenly feel strangely mirrored, and Odell thinks maybe, just maybe, that instructor had a point after all.

They’ve fought each other before, of course. You don’t get through Jaeger Academy without fighting every single one of your classmates at least a dozen times. But something feels different today. Odell comes in swinging, hard and fast, and it’s like--

He doesn’t know how to describe it. It’s like an echo of knowing: like seeing David sidestep before he actually does it, like adjusting his own stance so he doesn’t overbalance with the miss. Like chess. Like seeing the moves in his head before they happen: pivot, shift, flip. He turns on his heel and gets in close, gets David in a headlock, and there it is again: that brief instant of _knowing_ , before the world spins abruptly around him and he hits the ground, his arms pinned behind his back.

He looks up. David’s face is very close.

“You got me,” says Odell. His breathing is loud in his ears.

“Damn right I did,” says David, and he looks about as stunned as Odell feels.

“Again,” says the Marshal, and David releases him, lets him shake out his arms before he closes in again.

They go ten rounds. They each win five. By the end of the tiebreaker round a crowd has gathered but it’s so quiet all Odell can hear is the scuff of their feet on the mat. He can’t seem to land a hit on David, but that’s the thing--David can’t seem to hit him either. His legs burn with fatigue and his chest is tight and he can’t decide whether he wants it to end or to go on forever.

Afterward he’s never sure whose knees give out first. Probably it’s simultaneous. All Odell knows is suddenly he’s swaying unsteadily on the mat, staring wide-eyed at David, who’s staring back, and neither of them want to move, and in the single moment of pure, ringing silence, he thinks: _I could kiss him._

Then David grins suddenly, reaches out, pokes Odell directly in the sternum.

“Got you, bro,” he mouths, and then the crowd sweeps them both off their feet.

 

\---

 

Odell doesn’t have time to consider what the implications of that last round are, which is just as well, because he’s pretty sure he would’ve chickened out of the drift if he’d had time to overthink it. As it is, they’re practically thrown into the makeshift Conn-Pod that serves as a drift simulator for prospective pilots. The crowd’s followed them into the hangar bay: he’s pretty sure they all want to see what happens next, and in any case it hasn’t been all that long since the last attack.

He does have a moment of doubt as the drivesuit snaps into place around him, the panels flattening themselves along his spine with mechanical precision. You’re not supposed to do this, he thinks. You’re not supposed to wonder about--anything, the moment before you drift. They were very clear about that.

But then he looks across the cockpit to David, who’s grimacing a little as the helmet squashes his hair down, and something in his chest settles.

He closes his eyes, and readies for the drop.

 

\---

 

Drifting with David is:

_Rose sitting on the ground, tuning her guitar, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. His mother’s cooking, rich and hot, flavors you’ve never had before but immediately know and love the way David does. Your foot, connecting with a ball, and the arc of it as it swings over the wall and into the net, mathematical, inevitable._

_And then, with startling clarity: your own face, staring at you from across a loaded table. You’re laughing at yourself, and the laughter bridges two languages, and your smile is brilliant._

_“I’ma get it down,” you say. “By the time I come back, I’m gonna be able to speak to you, bro.”_

_You think: you could kiss him._

 

\---

 

He opens his eyes. Just to his left he can see David staring straight ahead, unmoving.

“David,” says Odell, slowly, and the answering rush of joy is unmistakable.

David turns to face him, then. There’s--something at the corner of his mouth, the beginnings of a smile, and Odell can feel it the same as he can feel everything else about him, and _that_ \--that’s a rush, that’s a trip and a half--

“Odell,” says David, and the smile breaks free.

“I could kiss you right now,” says Odell. It almost seems pointless to say it--there’s a loop of _I know you know_ going round and round in his brain--but he finds he wants to.

“Can’t,” says David. “The helmets are in the way.”

They grin at each other.

“You think we’ll make good pilots?” says Odell.

David’s grin widens. “Franck says if we get the Jaeger to dab on live TV, he’ll pay our pension after we get court-martialed and thrown out of the program.”

“I hope not, bro,” says Odell. He makes a fist, watches David mirror him. “We’re just getting started.”


End file.
